Medal of Honor - Frontline

The first ten minutes are the reason most people remember this game, and the reason it was made the way it was. Electronic Arts Los Angeles built the Omaha Beach landing to answer Saving Private Ryan, and it shows: the ramp drops, bullets chew through the men in front of you, and the beach is a crush of noise, smoke and obstacles. It is scripted to within an inch of its life, yet in 2002 on a PlayStation 2 it felt like a different kind of shooter.

What follows is a sequence of missions with Lieutenant Jimmy Patterson, an American soldier whose assignments take him through Europe, from the Normandy landings through sabotage runs and infiltrations to the bridges of Holland. The structure is the series template: clear objectives, checkpoints, and a steady stream of German soldiers who pop out of windows and doorways. Health comes from pickups rather than regeneration, so careless play is punished and caution is rewarded.

The weakness shows up when you ask the game to do anything it was not scripted for. The enemy AI is limited, and many encounters work because enemies are placed to be found rather than because they respond to you. Aiming on a controller was the era's central problem for first-person shooters on console, and this game handles it with a fairly generous lock-on assist and configurable controls. It works. It never feels precise, and the compromise has dated the shooting more than the visuals have.

What has lasted is the sound and the pacing. The orchestral score by Michael Giacchino gives the missions a gravity that the mechanics alone would not, and the weapons have a heavy, convincing crack. Levels alternate between loud set pieces and quieter infiltration, which keeps the campaign from becoming a single long firefight.

As a piece of history it matters, because it showed that a console-first shooter could carry a cinematic ambition without apologizing for the controller. As a game, it is short, stiff in places, and easy to outplay today. But the opening beach still hits harder than most of what it inspired.